The solar-powered pasteurizer story was very interesting---thanks to Nikki
Lee for posting it.  It contains a few "zingers, " though.  Like the "good
news" that a year's use costs $100 vs $3000 to $6000 for HALF a year of
antiretroviral medication for an HIV+ nursing mother.  So the baby and the
breastfeeding can be protected, but we still have this little problem with
the mother....she gets no treatment post-birth, just like in those AZT
protocols that treat a woman while she is pregnant and laboring but abandon
her after the baby has been born.

Dr. Jorgensen was quoted as saying "We hope that the breast milk device will
soon get introduced in countries where breast milk from a mother is used to
feed
others' children...At the moment, about 120 women in...Dar es Salaam, are
[expressing] breast milk and pasteurizing it for their own children or
children that belong to others, mainly premature babies in incubators,
children with cleft palate, or similar disadvantages."   What's your guess,
are these milk-supplying moms HIV- moms or HIV+ moms?  Somehow the idea of
HIV+ women donating milk to be pasteurized for other women's at-risk babies
in a clinical trial conducted under "Western" medical auspices seems pretty
far-fetched to me.  I would think that HIV+ mothers ought to be counseled
instead to conserve their energy and express milk only for their own babies.
HIV- women wouldn't need to have their milk pasteurized, although maybe since
the West is involved in the trial, all donor milk is pasteurized just as we
do it in North America.

Finally, there's the non-surprising statement that " the pharmaceutical
industry has not been supportive in promoting the pasteurizing concept, a
low-tech source of prevention that, on a long-term basis, would reduce the
need for medical drugs to manage AIDS."  I heard yesterday that the
pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable of all industries nowadays.
So of course they're not interested in a device that will cut into their
profits!  And again we run into the flaw in the plan...non-treatment for the
mothers.

Maybe HIV+ men could use the device to pasteurize their semen...Now that
might be a useful way to fight the spread of HIV!

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
Pennsylvania, USA

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